The Bartender
The Bartender's Story
927th year of the Scarlet Empress's reign
(5th year of the Interregnum, under Regent Focuf)
I've always liked people because they have stories. And I love hearing stories. Used to drive my mother crazy asking her to read me a story of the Dynasts, or of the Immaculate Heroes and their struggles to drive the Anathema out of Creation.
My father was a sailor with the Merchant Marine, and so he took my mother and I on our ship across all of Creation. I've sailed into ports in the North, South, East and West, all before I came of age. As such, I took in stories and songs from every port that we touched in.
There's no surprise in that I eventually turned to scholarship and history, because of my love of stories. After I came of age, I went to the Imperial University in Sdoia and became a linguistics student.
My father and mother retired from the Merchant Marine and went to the Principality of An-Teng to spend their senior years. After I graduated from university, I found out that there wasn't much demand for a commoner historian or translator on the Blessed Isle. All the jobs were snatched up by the Dragon-Blooded or people with Dynast connections. Bogged down by debt and depressed, I caught a tramp freighter working its way westward along the coast. My plan was to go back to An-Teng, move in with my parents, and figure out what happened next.
My father took sick with a plague that swept through the City four years ago, and died. Now it's my mother and I, and we do all right. I found a job at the House of Seven Dancer Shadows as a bartender, and it fit in nicely with what I love to do. Though it's a Lintha house, the madame of the house is fair, and the Lintha leave it alone. It's a favorite of House Tepet, so I get to talk to the soldiers and officers coming through. Heck, I've even got my own client base, though I'm not a courtesan. Instead, I've got friends amongst all the Imperial Legions that come back to visit me when they're on leave. And so I listen to their stories of distant lands, desperate battles, and harsh campaigns. And I write their stories. I've even gotten clearance from House Tepet to do this, as long as I don't reveal state secrets. Turns out that even the military brass like having a de-facto unofficial historian cataloguing the stories that don't ever make it into the reports.
And, I love writing about distant places and peoples that I'll never meet. I get to imagine what it'd be like to go visit them and discover strange new things.
Someday I'll get to do that for myself, but that'll probably be after Mother passes on to be with Father. She's doing all right and keeps telling me to go out into the world. But, I can't just leave her. So I write, I dream, and I serve drinks. It's a living.
927th year of the Scarlet Empress's reign
(5th year of the Interregnum, under Regent Focuf)
I've always liked people because they have stories. And I love hearing stories. Used to drive my mother crazy asking her to read me a story of the Dynasts, or of the Immaculate Heroes and their struggles to drive the Anathema out of Creation.
My father was a sailor with the Merchant Marine, and so he took my mother and I on our ship across all of Creation. I've sailed into ports in the North, South, East and West, all before I came of age. As such, I took in stories and songs from every port that we touched in.
There's no surprise in that I eventually turned to scholarship and history, because of my love of stories. After I came of age, I went to the Imperial University in Sdoia and became a linguistics student.
My father and mother retired from the Merchant Marine and went to the Principality of An-Teng to spend their senior years. After I graduated from university, I found out that there wasn't much demand for a commoner historian or translator on the Blessed Isle. All the jobs were snatched up by the Dragon-Blooded or people with Dynast connections. Bogged down by debt and depressed, I caught a tramp freighter working its way westward along the coast. My plan was to go back to An-Teng, move in with my parents, and figure out what happened next.
My father took sick with a plague that swept through the City four years ago, and died. Now it's my mother and I, and we do all right. I found a job at the House of Seven Dancer Shadows as a bartender, and it fit in nicely with what I love to do. Though it's a Lintha house, the madame of the house is fair, and the Lintha leave it alone. It's a favorite of House Tepet, so I get to talk to the soldiers and officers coming through. Heck, I've even got my own client base, though I'm not a courtesan. Instead, I've got friends amongst all the Imperial Legions that come back to visit me when they're on leave. And so I listen to their stories of distant lands, desperate battles, and harsh campaigns. And I write their stories. I've even gotten clearance from House Tepet to do this, as long as I don't reveal state secrets. Turns out that even the military brass like having a de-facto unofficial historian cataloguing the stories that don't ever make it into the reports.
And, I love writing about distant places and peoples that I'll never meet. I get to imagine what it'd be like to go visit them and discover strange new things.
Someday I'll get to do that for myself, but that'll probably be after Mother passes on to be with Father. She's doing all right and keeps telling me to go out into the world. But, I can't just leave her. So I write, I dream, and I serve drinks. It's a living.
posted by Xaedalus at 1:41 PM
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